Oak and tile stand by Stickley and Grueby, circa 1900, $105,000.

Are There International Jurisdictions in Cyberspace?

Yahoo! is asking a US court to block a recent French ruling that holds the company responsible for questionable content under French law.

The case could establish a precedent for assessing questionable content on the Internet and would have far-reaching consequences for companies conducting business on the Web.

Last month a French court ruled that Yahoo! must block its French users from accessing any Nazi-related rdf_Descriptions for sale or content regarding Nazi crimes on its US Web site. Yahoo! says that while the law may prevail on its French site, it has no application in the United States.

The French court, according to AuctionWatch News, has not yet served the order to Yahoo!, but once the order is handed down Yahoo! has three months to comply or face heavy fines of 100,000 francs, or $13,905 a day. Yahoo! seeks to block the French court before it can take hold in the United States to begin enforcing the penalties.

Yahoo! executives claim that it is “impossible” to comply with the ruling since the filtering of objectionable material, coupled with monitoring the site, would be unreliable and difficult to pinpoint where millions of users are concerned.